Chainsaw Warrior from Games Workshop is the classic nail-biting game for one strong-nerved player! It's the year 2032 and spatial warping has opened a hole into another dimension in the midst of the old municipal buildings at the heart of Manhattan. Bizarre and dangerous creatures are flooding into our dimension, intent on destruction.

March 20

If you already own Chainsaw Warrior, we've added Mac & Linux depots as Beta for the game, so if you already have it on Steam and own one or more of the new platforms, feel free to try it out and let us know how it is working out for you! Thanks.

“Perfectly judged, brutally demanding and almost impossible to put down...”
The Guardian

About This Game

Chainsaw Warrior from Games Workshop is the classic nail-biting game for one strong-nerved player! It's the year 2032 and spatial warping has opened a hole into another dimension in the midst of the old municipal buildings at the heart of Manhattan. Bizarre and dangerous creatures are flooding into our dimension, intent on destruction. Behind their actions is a controlling intelligence known as 'Darkness', who intends to drag New York back into the warp – destroying it utterly!

Air strikes, ground assaults and WMDs have all failed to stop the swarming forces from beyond. All that remains is a single hope: a shadowy ex-special forces soldier, enhanced for combat and known only as 'Chainsaw Warrior'. Equipped with all the latest high-tech armaments, he must battle his way through to the trans-dimensional ground-zero and defeat Darkness. Not only are there swarms of zombies, mutants, traps, Chaos Agents and other twisted denizens between him and Darkness, time is the enemy too! Only an hour remains to save New York before it is torn from our world forever.

First published as a solo boardgame in 1987, it has been updated, translated and re-engineered for the digital generation. In Chainsaw Warrior it's just you against both the clock and a tide of evil! Can you prevail where all others have failed? You only have 60 minutes to save New York!

I may not have played the original card game, but this digital adaptation is simple yet marvelous. The game itself plays out like a randomized card-game version of a rogue-like. I've seen many complaints about the unfairness of this game, due to its randomized nature and all, but I can't help but feel it's an unfair assumption to assume that just because it's a card game that this game is inherently intended to be a purely strategic experience. What it is at its core, is a quick-playing ride into hell.

Winning is a rarity - I haven't even won one game myself, but I still like to come back to it for a quick playthrough now and then, because it's easy to learn and fun to experiment with. It's nothing more than quick romps through bloodshed and randomized weaponry, but it doesn't pretend to be more than that either. That, and although its randomized nature - including randomizing the player's selection of weapons and items - may make it seem as though there isn't any room for strategy at all, the game does indeed have strategy in the same way most gambling games do. You're hedging your bets. Betting that larger firepower won't be necessary, betting that the monster around the bend WON'T be a radioactive sludge beast, betting you can open that door without wasting bullets and thus saving precious extra in-game time to complete your mission.

You'll come close, it might be painful. But this is the kind of pain I like from a game.

A card-based game, developed by Auroch Digital, it brings this Games Workshop title to life on PC. The concept and story are relatively simple: You are a super-soldier, and New York is about to be swallowed up by a black hole caused by ‘the Darkness’, a mysterious unknown entity of evilness and evil. It’s up to you to chainsaw the ♥♥♥♥ out of the Darkness and its forces, and to not let New York be sucked into an abyss in the process – you have an hour. Good luck!

As simple as the premise is, so too is the gameplay - you do anything, you roll dice. Essentially, the gameplay consists of location cards, each of which holds a certain event, and you need to deal with that event using your weapons, items, or just by moving on when there’s a clear room. Of course, chainsaw-ing a zombie in the face is still satisfying.

The sound is simple, but you’re basically just looking at the same screen with a different card all the time, so there’s not much complexity to be had, and whilst the art for the cards looks nice, don’t expect too much. Again, cards, not a 3D FPS or the like.

This particular title will probably be of great interest to Games Workshop fans, but new adopters may want to at least check the title out through reviews (see our video above) and the like before buying, as the replay value of it might be rather low to many.

02. SETTING: Chainsaw Warrior is based on the Games Workshop boardgame of the same name first released in the eighties. It is set in a future version of New York, in the year 2032 which is under invasion from evil, otherworldy forces.

03. STORY/BACKGROUND: A mysterious portal has appeared in the heart of the city from which deadly minions pour forth commanded by a dark malevolent force that calls itself Darkness. After several failed counter-attacks to liberate the city a retired, almost forgotten war hero is called upon, to mount one last desperate attempt to thwart the evil that is about to consume the city and send it to the otherside of the portal. As the player you take on the role of this soldier, armed to the teeth with the best gear science can offer. With only an hour left before New York disappears forever, you face the toughest challenge of your glorious career. Will you defeat Darkness in time?

04. GAME MODES: As per the original boardgame; only one game mode - singleplayer.

05. GAMEPLAY: Gameplay relies heavily on a combination of revealing consecutive cards and then choosing from a few key actions from the options that present themselves and/or rolling dice to determine the outcome of said actions. Including combat, evading, discovering equipment, using items and avoiding/disarming traps. The games begins with the creation of a character by rolling the core stats, special abilities & starting equipment including: Melee weapons, firearms, heavy weapons, devices, clothing and special items.

Once the player is ready they must reach and kill Darkness within an hour of game time. Movement is abstracted with the turn of a card representing progress made towards your goal is located. Every card and each action costs 30 seconds in time. There are two decks of fifty-four cards, each deck representing a day and night cycle. Cards consist of encounters with enemies, traps and obstacles designed to slow progress, discarded equipment and special transit cards.

06. MECHANICS: There are no complicated mechanics. A combination of dice rolls and modifiers are used to deterime character stats, combat and action successes or fails. Different cards are used to represent encounters and other events. They split into four main types: transit, enemies, inventory and traps. The final boss is Darkness and has a special card.

Equipment has a huge impact on success or failure. Melee combat takes a weapon's modifier adds it to hand-to-hand skill and the roll of a dice, compared to the enemy's skill and dice roll. Firearms require a certain roll equal to or less to a particular enemy from dice rolls and the marksmanship modifer. Devices allow you to perform certain actions or provide modifiers and nulify penalties in combat or in a given situation like if it night. Firearms are also limited by the amount of ammo in the magazines.

If an enemy is encountered on any card the player can choose to shoot in the first turn of combat or engage in melee combat and thereafter remain in melee combat or attempt a special action. Combat is determined with one or two dice rolls. If the player loses a combat turn they take damage and lose 30 seconds. If they win the enemy is killed. In the event of a draw the player may be able to choose a special action such as: fleeing, taking a lucky shot or hiding. Players are defeated by: dying in combat, by radiation or venom, running out of time or facing Darkness without a special weapon. Additional actions such as fleeing combat, hiding from enemies, taking a lucky shot can be made if the player is injured during a combat turn.

There are several types of common enemies including: zombies and rat-packs with different combat stats. Chaos agents are varied come with special abilites such as; forcing the player to drop equipment or the ability to KO the player and losing them a large amount of valuable time. Mutants, Slime and the Meat Machine are tougher, rarer enemies that are particular difficult to kill and in turn can hurt or kill the player in quick-time.

There are also around half a dozen different traps which have different effects on play such as: slowing the player down, disabling equipment or hurting the player. All of these can be nulified or disarmed with equipment, devices or weapons if carried. Day & Night is divided when you reach the 30minute mark. During the night time your abilities suffer unless you are equipped with certain items and the enemies become stronger. Fear not though as your character can encounter discarded items during their journey.

Awaiting you is Darkness, the final encounter somewhere in the second deck. This end of game boss is a tough hombre and can only be defeated if equipped with either a Laser Lance or Implosion Vest. The latter resulting in a stalemate. Make no mistake Darkness makes for a worthy opponent and more likely that not you will die, even on Easy difficulty.

07. A.I: Due to the simple yet elegant design no A.I is required.

08. GRAPHICS: These are minimal 2D art based creations. Nothing amazing but they do the job and immerse you in the game's setting. The cards are well-drawn and a little variation is used to add to the sense of immersion.

10. SOUNDTRACK & AUDIO: A simple repetitive yet catchy tune in a Midi format plays continuously. It oozes atmospehere and captures the ambience of the setting, increasing in tempo as the action increases in pace. Combat has some nice weapon effects.

11. VOICE ACTING: There is none except in the opening cutscenes, unless you count the mocking laughter of Darkness as Voice acting.

12. DIFFICULTY: There are three difficulties: Easy, Normal & Hard. These affect the way in which player stats are determined at the start of the game. Higher stats are more prevelent in Easy mode.

13. PLAYTIME: 15-20 hours to complete all achievements. Overall a typical game can take between 1 and 30 minutes depending on how long you manage to survive and reach Darkness.

14. PROBLEMS: No problems other than achievements not working, mostly in the week after they were added. On two occasions. That said the developer fixed them a week or so later.

15. ACHIEVEMENTS: Overall there are no time-consuming or difficult. They mainly consist of complete game at each difficulty level, perform x number of kills or actions, take y amount of damage, defeat Darkness z times. Perhaps the most difficult to discover is the achieve all 9 outcomes.

16. DLC: No DLC. But the game has a spin off - Chainsaw Warrior: Lords of Night.

17. APPEAL: This game will appeal mostly to fans of the original boardgame and casual players, maybe those of you looking for some quick time-killing distraction that you can enjoy and forget.

18. ENJOYMENT: Given the games limited scope, short games and repetitive nature it is very enjoyable in short spurts. Ideal if you're waiting for something quick and need some distraction.

19. LONGEVITY/REPLAYABILITY: The game was designed to be almost infinitely replayable, if rather repetitive.

20. VALUE FOR MONEY: The game is fairly cheap and one that I purchased at full-price. I haven regreted it one bit.

VERDICT: A cheap enjoyable card-driven game. Simple in its execution, elegant in its design, with a good deal of sophistication in its play. If you are a fan of Games Workshop or the original boardgame, or fancy playing numerous short turn-around games then this is a good buy. Its one of my favourite games.

A Games Workshop fan of the 1980's will probably remember this. I however was neither of these. In fact it wasn't until the Exploration Sale (2014), that I found this game whilst browsing the usual Warhammer 40k games and came across this little gem. Since I'm neither a child of the 80's, nor was I a Games Workshop fan, I believe I can provide a fresh, unbiased review of this game. So please bear with me.

First off, this game is completely about the luck of the roll. You roll for everything in this game, and I love it! You begin the game with a comic strip intro, and then you begin the game. You have to roll d6's to get your stats. There are no RPG "select this stat?" After you have rolled for your stats, you get some basic points that you can use to aquire weapons, HTH (Hand To Hand) weapons, and or clothing. But you must keep in mind you have a very, and I do mean very, limited amount of points, which usually for me, winds up being one gun, one HTH weapon, and that is all.

After all this prep you begin the game full. You are thrust into New York with a background picture, on your left are cards, to your right, your actions. You turn a card face up, and then you proceed from there. Once you turn it face up, if it is an enemy, you must roll the d6, depending on what you chose. As a short example. Say you turn over a card and it is a zombie, you select say HTH, once done, a combat roll will happen and based on your starting stats, you must equal or beat a certain roll. Or conversely, you can use your weapon, say a rifle. If you roll badly though, you can and will miss and as a last resort, you will be forced into HTH or even made to try and escape the threat.

You go through the apartment blocks, and roll your way to victory! But not all the cards are of course enemies, you have some empty room cards, to which you must roll your d6's to see if anything lurks around the corner. You can get item cards, medical pack cards etc. But the majority of what you will be doing is rolling against the cards that are enemies. Once you have a chance to escape a building, you must roll through some more cards to make it out alive. Which if like me, you have been left with nothing but your HTH weapon, can be very tense.

To make it to the end you need good rolls, and you need to watch your bottom bar which includes a venom and radiation meter. If either fill up, it doesn't look hopeful for you. Amongst the threats lurking behind each card backing, is the ever present timer. Everything you do takes time. Be it reloading a weapon. Using an item. And such. Once it becomes night, your stats may go down and it may just get that bit extra harder. As if it wasn't hard enough!

I'd recommend this game based on it's original HARD difficulty alone as it is brutal and who knows if you will get the rolls you need. If you're a die fan, then sadly this game only uses d6 dices. The game has the mentallity for just "one more roll, I just need one more good roll!"

This game is a digital version of an old board game that has quite an interesting concept and idea behind it. Survive long enough and oppose all kinds of enemies and obstacles in order to defeat the final boss. The game itself is neatly presented and it looks quite good at first, especially for a solitaire board game.

Unfortunately the nature of the game is very dependant on random number generation, from the character creation to the combat rolls. Which kind of makes it extremely random and luck dependant rather than skill and careful planning. Furthermore your options as a player are severely limited. Sometimes you will have to manage your inventory and what kind of items you want to take or use but overall you will just throw dice over and over. Each encounter is resolved by dice rolls and it's absolutely not spectecular nor interesting. At some point you are just so bored because it is not a very involving process. Also the actual animations are so minimal, that you won't get any excitement out of it.

Don't get me wrong, I am a fan of board games and I do not mind minimal graphical presentation but this game is shallow and very boring at best. There is nothing that makes you want to come back, perhaps just if you ownd the original game as a kid and feel nostalgic towards it.

I have always had a soft spot for the Gamesworkshop style of dice rolls screwing you over. The randomness of their games is waht appeals to me. I appreciate that people like to plan and strategise but life has a habit of kicking you in the teeth and that is what a bad dice roll will do to you in this game. short, sweet, difficult, brilliant. love it.

Fantastic little game that really can suck you in - great atmosphere, super-cheesy plot about saving New York from a horde of monsters out of this world, nice visuals and sound (keep in mind though, this is a the recreation of a 80's tabletop card/dice game). The game itself has no real flaws - except for one (but this is down to personal preferences): if you don't like randomness, plus rolling d6 OVER AND OVER is not your thing, you can stop reading now - this is not for you. That being said, rolling the dice in Chainsaw Warrior is seriously FUN.

Chainsaw Warrior, a 1 to 1 remake of the old single player boardgame from 1987. It's as hard as nails, even on easy and it works because of it. The only question here is, why haven't you already paid for it?

Story - *SPOILERS* It is centered around the chainsaw warrior *you*, trying to save the world from creatures that came from another universe by a portal. You must slaughter countless zombies, rats, machines and other monsters to get to the final boss and success in defeating him.

Gameplay - You roll with dices to decide what happens, so the game is basically almost all based on luck. First you roll on how well your characters strats are, choose your equipment, and go battle. I must say the battles get somewhat repetitive after a while, though that doesn´t change the awesomeness and randomness of the cards.

Verdict - The game tried to replicate the old card game, and it did well. The game has very suitable graphics, art style and game mechanics for it´s type. The music is quite enjoyable as well. For me, it deserves a solid 9/10. I would recommend it to anyone who likes card games. The minus point for it is not being realistic, I mean, my chainsaw ran out of petrol after 2 victims c;. Enjoy!

I've never played the original - I bought it because I'm a fan of Games Workshop's non-core lines (Blood Bowl and Necromunda in particular are favorites), but I'd never even heard of this.

The game is a series of dice rolls with no real strategic decisions to be made. The largest amount of influence you have is to decide what gear you buy at the start of the game, after that a Choose Your Own Adventure novel allows more player agency. You get to decide whether to try to shoot before engaging in melee with enemies. That's the full sum of your available decisions in at least 90% of the average game.

I suppose if you are really bored it might be worth it at 50% off. Do not buy this expecting the Games Workshop magic, though. This is one of their earliest offerings and it shows.

Too random, no possibility to make any significant choices beyond choosing the proper equipment after re-rolling the stats a few times, and in the end it just boils down to often failing 1:6 (or less) checks which usually result in immediate death.Was fun for maybe an hour, before the pattern became clear and uninteresting.

Chainsaw Warrior was an old board game by Games Workshop, back in the day before the company focused completly on the Warhammer franchise. This version is a direct adaptation of that game. For this reason, it may appear overly simplistic for many computer gamers. Beings from another dimension threaten to destroy New York and you, the cybernetically enhanced (think 6 Million Dollar man meets Snake Plissken) have 60 minutes to get in the quarantine zone, fight your way through zombies and mutants and reach the big bad "Darkness" and hope you'll be able to kill it.You roll 6-sided dice to create your chainsaw warrior, pick up some starting equipment and start searching the municipal buildings for your target. The game comprises of you turning over cards froma deck, each card being one room you search. Once the first 54 card deck is done, you proceed to the second one which includes Darkness. But the clock is ticking: each turn of a card, each round of combat, each other action are 30 seconds and there are 108 cards to turn. So you have to move through the building as fast as possible, conserving ammo and trying not to die of radiation or poison or zombie bites. In the end, when you finally get to darkness, it may all come down to one stupidly lucky roll of double sixes. But that is what suicide missions with only a remote chance of success are all about.

Single player card game where you dig through two 54 card decks on a time limit to defeat the very uniquely named big bad, "Darkness". Most card games have enough randomization because of the shuffling of cards, luck of the draw, and so forth, but for some reason Chainsaw Warrior feels the need to add die rolls to almost every action, including stats during character creation. On Hard difficulty the game can be over before its even begun because of bad die rolls for stats or bad card draws for equipment (because you're only allowed to chose catagory, not specific items). [Quick anecdote: Mark Rosewater at WotC noted that the main reason the Star Wars CCG failed was because fans hated having to roll dice for everything in a card game.]

Even if you perfectly pick your loadout and get decent stats, many cards in the play decks have incredibly gamebreaking abilities. For example, one card makes you reshuffle all the cards in the deck and start over, another will break your sole win condition weapon, and another will make you lose several turns (randomly decided how many, of course). The most frustrating part is these cards might as well say "You Lose!"... but they just tease you into playing an unwinnable game. Many cards also have stat debuffs (zombie venom or radiation) that stack over time and are difficult to remove, providing yet another way for you to lose the game.

Of course, being a cheap, direct iOS port also brings a slew of other issues. A touch screen interface with gigantic oversized buttons, "click-click-click to play" gameplay, and worst of all, savescumming. The decks are shuffled at the start of the game and are never reshuffled unless you trigger a certain trap. While this is realistic, it makes for bad video game gameplay. To put it simply, you can save the game every card and reload if you make a huge mistake or if you want to redo a fight (even the end boss!). This removed all of the challenge and distilled the game down into simple die rolls and restarts. While it is ignorable, you will still probably restart the game when you pull one of the previously mentioned "almost game-ending" cards.

Chainsaw Warrior was probably a lot more fun to play sitting on the couch on a weekend afternoon but is a huge headache in its poorly ported video game form. Only recommended for nostalgic value or for owners of the original game.

A quick pick-up & play game that can be played and beaten in 15 – 40 minute bursts (depending on how well you roll your starting stats)Due to the board game it is replicating, all the mechanics are in the open and based off six-sided dice rollsOpening comic is very slick and sets the scene for the upcoming game-playArtwork is well drawn and retains the original board game’s motifA high difficulty level that rewards diligenceCard descriptions are straight-forward and easy to understandVery rewarding to finally beat the game, on any of the three difficulty settings

The Bad:

Tutorial is lacking for those not familiar with the original board game from 1987Unexplained abbreviations are common and some important game-play mechanics aren’t fully explained (I’m looking at you, guns)Moderate level of chance present with every play-through, which can cause frustration when having a lengthy play sessionAdmittedly this is less of a problem for the Easy mode, which allows you to pick your equipment before heading forth to save the worldThe difficult-to-beat ending was anti-climactic and gone after a mouse click. It would have been nice to have been treated with another interesting comicVoice acting during the comic is a little monotonous, which doesn’t fit with the well produced comic animationsThis is very minor, but I must have sat through 20 “how to play the game” tutorial iterations before I noticed the “Replay Tutorial?” button in the options screenThe tutorial was quite helpful the first time around, but maybe after that it should automatically switch the option to “NO” in the options screen

Can you play it while the children are awake?:

I felt like the artwork was a little too gory for them to be taking in.

Though the gameplay is pretty tame (virtual dice roll across the screen in place of “actions”), I feel the zombie pics on the cards would be a little too much for younger ones.

Did I make time to complete it?:

I felt compelled to beat the game on Easy mode. The learning curve was steep in the beginning (not having played the original), but I persevered and became victorious! A little achievement pop-up hasn’t felt so rewarding since beating Super Meat Boy.

Okay, time to show off just how much of an old-school, dyed-in-the-wool, sad-♥♥♥♥ nerd I really am: I used to own this board game back in the day, and it's a SINGLE PLAYER BOARD GAME. That's how sad I am...er, WAS (I would never do anything like that nowadays, except for innumerable recent games of Arkham Horror by myself...but apart from that, NEVER)!!!

This is the first time I've tried one of these literal board game conversions, and I must say I do find it all a bit odd as a concept, but that aside this is about as successful as something like this could ever have been. And I've just spent a solid few hours trying to conquer all three difficulty levels, so there's obviously something a little bit compelling about it all. Having said that, I suspect there's a not a great deal of replayability once one has gained all three - count 'em, THREE - achievements, and I'm already two down, so how much this is worth the measly five buck asking price is up to you.

My advice would be to wait til it's on sale, and then the heck with it...how much playing time do you expect for two or three dollars? Skyrim won't be that cheap anytime in the next decade, so by all means, if you're as big a nerd as me, and want a taste of what we old ♥♥♥♥ers used to play BEFORE the Playstation 1 even existed, then it's surely worthwhile as a curiosity piece if nothing else. By the time I conquer all three difficulties I probably will have wasted five hours of my precious life, so that's about a buck an hour. Only the cheapest of cheapskates can balk at that kinda logic, surely...

Hey, did you ever want to play Chainsaw Warrior but didn't want to look like a total forever alone playing a board game BY YOURSELF? You're in luck, because now it's on Steam and mobile devices as a video game! It's brutally hard, so much so that while doing research for this review, I read that a dude who started playing this game in 1987 never got so much as a single win from the game in over 25 years. He became MEGA-PUA, Godzilla's latest nemesis. Losing streaks like these are a result of dice-based mechanics combined with card-based ♥♥♥♥ery, which results in this game being a big ol' pile of NERD GAMBLING. However, I thoroughly enjoy this because it is possible to get around those disadvantages and find a way to outwit and cleave through enemies like nothing, so it is possible to have a fighting chance. I enjoyed it, but I don't feel I'm going to enjoy it all that longer. But it's cheap and you can throw on some music from Thomas Barrandon in the background to enhance the experience.